By Mark Lebetkin
The Active Times
What do you do when survival is not guaranteed?
You’re lost, stranded, injured miles from civilization -- if you even know what direction civilization is. Chances are you haven't taken a survival course, and all you've got to fall back on are your wits and fragments of received wisdom that you’ve gleaned from TV, movies and maybe a magazine article or two.
The sun's going down, and your stomach starts growling, and you think, "Maybe I should find some berries for dinner" -- you’re pretty sure you know which ones are edible. Or it’s been a couple days and you remember an episode of Man vs. Wild where Bear Grylls chows down on a raw grub and think “I might just be hungry enough…” Or, say you've hiked to the bottom of a canyon and realize you don’t know how to get out and your water's running low. "I should make this last,” you think before your mind turns to an old John Wayne movie where he squeezes clear liquid from the pulp of a barrel cactus. Ask a survival expert, though, and he or she will likely tell you none of these things is a good idea. For just about any survival situation, there's a wealth of knowledge out there, and a lot of it's bad. Often things aren't helped by the burgeoning number of survival reality shows, which are designed to entertain rather than to educate. "I've worked on these reality shows," says Tony Nester, an expert on desert survival and head of Ancient Pathways, an outdoor survival and bushcraft school based in Flagstaff, Arizona. "They're heavily scripted and there’s always a support crew within twenty feet, twenty-four seven."
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